Audiobus: Use your music apps together.
What is Audiobus? — Audiobus is an award-winning music app for iPhone and iPad which lets you use your other music apps together. Chain effects on your favourite synth, run the output of apps or Audio Units into an app like GarageBand or Loopy, or select a different audio interface output for each app. Route MIDI between apps — drive a synth from a MIDI sequencer, or add an arpeggiator to your MIDI keyboard — or sync with your external MIDI gear. And control your entire setup from a MIDI controller.
Download on the App StoreAudiobus is the app that makes the rest of your setup better.
Comments
I should clarify that I didn't mean that echoboy and valhalla were duplicates, I meant that I just spent money on echoboy and haven't had time to dig in yet so I wasn't going to buy another delay just yet. I love valhalla room, so I have no doubts about the quality of the delay.
I appreciate the extensive answer. Thank you very much.
They are all one or two trick ponys. Their sonic palete does not come close to what we have in one plugin on MacOS or Windows.
Kosmonaut i can get different tones from but it probably gets only 15% of what VD, EB and EC300 can dish out in terms of variety in just one plugin.
I did get Audioeffx and TapDelay in the current sale and their quality is good but they are quite limited IF you compare them with VD,EB,etc.
I guess Sean´s work over the last years did pay off and we should be lucky to be able to play with the delays in Valhalla realms.
As I suggested in my post, in isolation these are limited compared to the best desktop options, but when you combine them in tools like apeMatrix and AUM (AUM is better for simple insert effect chains) you can come up with powerful/unique FX. The thing that's missing on iOS is lots of presets like you get with SoundToys, Eventide or Valhalla, but that doesn't make them any less effective when used to the maximum of their potential.
In the fullness of time, the big desktop players will transition to iOS but for the moment you can purchase excellent modular FX components that you can combine to great effect for at least a 10th of the cost of desktop plugins.
In the medium-term iOS is going to become even more modular. It's a sustainable model for talented indie developers, who can charge a reasonable price for more focused apps that tackle particular challenges. I'm ok with that seeing as iOS Audio is pretty much throttled to a single audio core. The benefit of this single core approach is many small utility apps can combine and maintain sample accuracy. Sure this means that customers have to put a little more effort in, but it also means that those same customers are more likely to come up with signature sounds of their own rather than relying on the same presets as everybody else.
I'm glad @jonmoore offered a path for the IOS User to approach using existing IOS Apps
to make some of these sounds. AUM's going to add the ability to save/load/add sub-presets
so maybe we can share some of these combinations of FX.
Does ApeMatrix have good tools for sharing configs? We could share those too.
Personally, I only have a few Apps that are not on the list so I'm ready to learn some theory of
Multi-FX. (The mention of Guitar Pedal Delay got my attention). I played with the dotted 8th delays
when that was mentioned a few months back and Kozmonaut and Dischord 4 worked well as I recall.
The Forum Wiki will help make these information focused threads be easily searchable.
Yes, it's adding the ability to save presets per Matrix (there are three Matrices in each apeMatrix instance), plus it can do advanced modular routing that making it especially suitable for multi-FX chains.
AUM and AudioBus will cover most simpler needs (linear insert FX chains).
But isn´t it the case that when you use apematrix all the plugs are either in serial or paralel. You can´t intertwine lets say a rx950 into the feedback loop of a delay.
And all of the actual iOS delay parameters are rudimentary: Where is for example the groove or feel function which lets you shuffle or swing the delay or rush or drag the feel of the Echoboy. Or where is the sim function of an EC300, which lets you imprint the tonal character of 30 different sources.
Maybe you could get there with a cascade of plugins in apematrix, but then if you want to play with the parameters you´d have to juggle thorugh a multiplex of plugin-windows.
This is where VD is brilliant. So few knobs and soo many different tones. It is mindboggling how these combinations can sound so different. I could spend weeks on this one page and still discover new tones. It´s gui is so simple and the possibilties so complex.
@dreamrobe You're missing the point. I'm not saying that Valhalla Delay isn't great or that something like it or SoundToys/Eventide options wouldn't be welcome on iOS.
My point was simply that there are tools in place that allow you to get pretty creative on iOS and at a reasonable DSP overhead. Do they allow you to roll your own Echoboy/Valhalla Delay, of course not. But they're still excellent delay tools when judged on their own terms.
Not happy with the delay options open to you on iOS, the answers simple, use desktop tools.
To get this into some perspective: the software heritage of Echoboy reaches back more than 2 decades, Sean Costello (Valhalla) started his own business 10 years ago, but before that had 6 years work on audio algorithms with Sharc DSPs.
For reference on his site: https://valhalladsp.com/manifesto/
Just recently Izotope aquired Exponential Audio, more or less to get the expertice of Michael Carnes (ex Lexicon engineer).
These people have a rare degree of deep knowledge about reverb and delay - it's a lot more challenging than most audio processes handled by standard SDK code.
There's also a lot of experience involved how to design control surfaces that turn software into a user friendly experience.
It's absolutely possible to do the same in IOS, but simply a lot of effort - and IOS prices don't look exactly promising (or motivating) for anyone interested to enter this domain.
My favourite delays atm are an emulation of the Ursa Major Space Station (Sean Costello admits in his blog that he failed on that one) and the Lexicon Vortex.
The latter has an interface controlled by 2 dials: one to select a parameter (printed on the frontplate) and another for the value, a number from 0 to 64.
Tweaking can drive you nuts, but it's output is unique and rewarding.
Regarding the multi app approach and AUM: it's routing is more versatile than it may look at first glance. You can feedback into earlier processing channels... up to the degree of a full feedback (which is indicated on screen).
A bit of care with levels applies (and one should stay away from obvious nonsense), but the app doesn't stop processing.
I would like to request a similar shopping list for ValhallaReverb (or the best Reverb-Based Multi-FX product in the desktop market) for the IOS Community of Music Makers and Engineers.
I just looked for Delay holes in my Tool box and Tap Delay is on Sale today and some of them are very inexpensive to add.
Positioning the various tools with simple one-liners is worthy of Wiki preservation and for others to comment with Wiki-links to your list.
@jonmoore provided an IOS Shopping List for Delay-based Confgurations to imitate ValhallaDelay.
I would like to request a similar shopping list from @jonmoore to get close to ValhallaReverb.
Please.
@McD It's not so much a shopping list for Valhalla Delay as it is the component parts for richer multi-FX, including delay - filtering, distortion, saturation, multiband crossovers and modulation; not forgetting the delay taps.
As mentioned you'll get more mileage from apeMatrix than AUM as you can configure both parallel and series processing. But a lot of the time simply adding saturation and a tight reverb is all that's needed to lift a sterile digital delay into a warm organic tape delay; and for that, a good old fashioned send/return channel with the saturation fx and reverb in series is fine.
As for rolling your own reverb that's a whole different level of Heath-Robinson.
But even here with room reverbs adding layers of dirt and modulation to separate early and late reflection passes can be really effective. If you look at VirSyn AudioReverb that's the only real difference between it and the simpler reverb in Virsyn AudioEffx.
The really cool thing about attempting to roll your complex FX out of simpler FX ingredients is that when you do get access to more sophisticated FX plugins, you're more likely to be less of a preset jockey.
Picked up ValhallaDelay today as well. It’s fantastic. There’s magic in Sean’s treatment of diffusion that can push it into (ultra-high-quality) reverb territory. Unfortunately as a complete package, there’s nothing like it on iOS, and no combination of iOS apps will allow for the delightfully smeared astral lushness on offer in this plugin. The closest would be a combination of FabFilter Timeless with Pro-R smoothing over the edges, of course only within Auria. Most other options on iOS are infused with a kind of metallic aliased flavour that gets worse if you stack multiple effects. I’m specifically talking about reverb and diffusion here. Once you hear it, you can’t un-hear it unfortunately. Special shoutout to Kosmonaut, AUFX Space and a couple of the Kleverb algorithms for sounding pretty damned amazing in the cosmic DSP delay-line lushness sweepstakes.
Thanks for the considered reply. This has been a great OT session for me.
I used your FX list for shopping since I only needed 4 items. So, I'm good with the exception of the FabFilter plug-ins since I assumed they would drop new AUv3 products on us overtime.
AUFX Space will go on my shopping list. I had passed on the 4 Apps mentioned but thought they might have benefits waiting to be discovered in combination with the other toys.
Lately, MIDI FX have been keeping me buying too much.
But I could try a Valhallah for my MacBook and improve my ability to discern a quality multi-FX
sound. I'm happy that I consider AudioReverb to be superior just by listening.
@McD For out and out best in class pizazz it has to be Valhalla Shimmer but for flexibility, Valhalla Delay is a good first bite of the cherry. Whichever one you pick you'll get two more free ones that are better than a good many commercial plugins and seeing as you're a guitarist, I give it a year before you have the complete collection.
I opted to wait until Vallhalla Delay was released and purchased it instead of Echoboy. Echoboy has been around a long time and I wanted something different and new. Echoboy is still on my "to get someday" list. I already have a multi-tap delay with D16 Tekturon (that came as part of the Silverline collection), so feel pretty reasonably covered for my needs (and just the DAW delay for anything super simple). Or I can hook up my iPhone and use it as an effects rack with all the Audio Damage and other effects.
I decided to start with Valhalla Delay to have a model for Multi-FX sounds to emulate with
the "IOS Shopping List of FX Apps". I'll put Shimmer on the wish list. I installed the 2 extras after inputing answers into their survey so they can better target me for marketing. I had to create a kill file for Waves after doing that.
The experience reminded me of N things I dislike about Desktop purchasing/using:
1. Register to get stuff or access licenses (iTunes effective made me do that once).
2. License files (iTunes secretly manages this for vendors but I can load on many devices).
3. Plug-in install process requiring reboots (3 reboots today).
4. Complexity of application removal and variance by vendor.
Still... adding Valhalla Delay to a couple tracks reminded me of the difference between the audio quality on a Mac vs iPad. It's like changing from earbuds to closed backed headphones:
extra volume and an immersive sound.
Tradeoffs. Thanks for the push over the edge.
At least I doesn’t need iLOK !
True. There are levels of licensing hell with the License Manager variant being my most dreaded. Enterprise Software Apps were the worst like one that that performed system backups and the License Manager had a bug and you couldn't restore data. Good times.
I love Open Source solutions whenever possible which increased to cover so much
functionality that the Software Market became a Service Business.
Outside of Audio Damage, Sean is about as DRM free as you can get in plugin land.
One benefit our friends on the desktop provide us is the good old try before you buy scheme. Even the mightiest of the resistors (yet again Audio Damage) succumbed to making demos available with Enso and Quanta.
For every iLok/Syncrosoft gangster protection racket you've got California hippie types relying on peoples honesty to at least occasionally do the right thing - and once more in this instance, Audio Damage are kings. They've even been known to offer upgrade licenses to those that didn't purchase the original version in the first place.
I like their 'demo' model with audio fading every 45 seconds. Plenty of time to make a buyer's decision with a real test.
No pleasing some folk.
The ValhallaDelay looks like a good start for me. I downloaded all the demo's and it's
the most versatile for my tastes. I'm glad I have the Shimmer Demo to use as a base of comparison with IOS FX but I probably wouldn't use it as much since I tend towards mellow jazz.
Be sure to download Valhalla Freq Echo as it's one of the free ones I mentioned.
https://valhalladsp.com/shop/delay/valhalla-freq-echo/
The other one is ValhallaSpaceModulator which is free once you've purchased another plugin (which you've now done).
https://valhalladsp.com/shop/modulation/valhalla-space-modulator/
They're both brilliant and much that Freq Echo appears to cover the same ground as Delay, the algorithms are different and provide their own particular colour.
Got it. What I love about prior Valhalla plugins was not only the sound quality, but the ease of getting the sound I wanted. This was no different. Already dialed in on a Sirin track with beautiful results. Felt I got pretty familiar with what the plugin can do in 30 mins, cant wait to record some other parts that need delay.
How are you finding Sirin? And do you have a Minitaur to compare it with? Next deliveries aren't available till the end of May here in the UK but it's definitely on my shopping list as I love my Minitaur.
Thanks for drawing attention to this, @vitocorleone123. I bought the plugin and love it already.
I use GigPerformer to put together my guitar sounds from a whole range of plugins (centred around S-Gear) and I’ve been using EchoBoy for delays mainly but ValhallaDelay brings a whole new thing to my sound.
Very nice indeed.
I had a Minitaur. Long story short, I originally thought analog bass sounds were a priority with the portable iPad rig, but as we got more into this revisioned band, we needed leads more. They are really almost identical except for the cosmetics and frequency range. I cant tell a difference in the timbre of the oscs but I didnt a/b them.
Finally bought Valhalla Delay today during my lunch break. Even using a simple bell sound from Logic Pro X’s ES2 Synth makes a glorious sound! Can’t wait to plug in a guitar and mess around with an eBow using this thing. I suspect I’m going to be diving deep into some ambient stuff for awhile.